The present invention relates to platform independent replication.
Today, modern, industry-standard computers can include multiple layers of hardware and software that operate together as a system. Hardware resources can include a central processor, display, storage, networking, peripheral devices, and so forth. Operating system components known as device drivers control hardware resources, translating operating system instructions into a specific device control language. Drivers are developed with an assumption of exclusive device ownership. For example, it is assumed that a video driver owns a video adapter exclusively. Any software application that calls the video adapter must interact with the hardware using the video driver. When assumptions about exclusive device ownership are broken, systems typically fail to function properly.
The concept of exclusive device ownership typically precludes the possibility of running more than one operating system concurrently on a computer. One approach to overcoming this limitation is virtual machine (VM) technology. Virtualization involves redirecting interactions with device resources at lower levels in such a way that higher-level application layers are unaffected (e.g., hardware resource sharing from an application level view).